The first thing in my mind when the plane landed in Hong Kong airport was," Don't sneeze, don't sneeze, don't sneeze (I have sinus attacks every now and then) or cough!" The last thing I wanted to do was spend days in a quarantine room in the airport. I wasn't ill or anything but there were warning signs on swine flu everywhere at Hong Kong airport. I reckon if you accidentally sneezed at the immigration counter, they probably drag you out of the queque into quarantine immediately.
But overall, my experience in Hong Kong was enjoyable. The hotel room I stayed in overlooked the harbour and was just a minute's walk away from the convention center.
It was pretty good from the start at the yoga conference, we had goodie bags filled with snack bars( I guess it was a hint we were all going to work hard) and little lancome lotions. The yoga bazaar was the first thing you saw before the conference halls and they were filled with yoga apparels to yoga cds and books. Just a look around, it feels as if you were living in yoga journal watching people like David Swensen, Ana Forest, Desiree Rumbaugh, Patrick Creelman, Paul Dallaghan, Twee Merrigan, Ganesh Mohan, Jason Crandel, Maya Fiennes, e.t.c. Better than visiting Madame Tussauds!
I loved Twee Merrigan's playful vinyasa flow and her grace to help us live through our own body and mind experience. Desiree Rumbaugh's good sense of humor and amazing backbends. Maya Fiennes endless energy working through the chakras was out of this world. Patrick Creelman's challenging poses with his groovy and upbeat soundtracks. Yup yup yup....I was yoga saturated big time!! All in all, I reckon I did 100
urdhva danurasana and 500 adho muka svanasana in 4 days...I kid you not!
I met amazing friends from Hong Kong, South Africa, Beijing, UK, Singapore and US.....
Gotta tell you this! Love Twee Merrigan. I had so much fun doing her yoga sessions. We did a class on 840 000 yoga possibilities and she had this wild idea, took us to the yoga aid challenge with MC YOGI and DJ Robin Livingston. We ran and followed Twee from our hall right across the bazaar and straight through to MC YOGI. We danced crazy for 20 minutes and ran straight back with Twee to our own hall again. Talk about having a good warm up session!! IT WAS WILD!!! Brain stormed thru' the poses and Twee's creative imagination took us beyond our set ideas and believes.
I am so glad I had the opportunity to attend such a fantastic event. I will never forget this wonderful experience and hope to see more again in the near future..................
